In 2013, Microsoft refused to turn information from a customer’s email account over to law enforcement pursuant to a warrant in a narcotics investigation. The information, Microsoft noted, was stored on a server in Ireland. Ireland, as you may have learned in elementary school, is neither one of the fifty states nor a US territory. It’s a sovereign state with its own laws. US search warrants carry no weight there.
Tag: reading
Does it Matter Who’s at Fault? The Responsibility is Always Yours
I’m reading Mark Manson’s “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,” and the entirety of Chapter 5 is focused on this idea: “There is a simple realization from which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances.”
What a Tragedy
When people are young and very small, when their appetites are most ripe for learning, we tell them “now these are the important books that responsible people read.” Then we proceed to rob them of the most important components of reading: getting to be the one who chooses the book, getting to be the one who chooses when reading should be done, and getting to be the one who decides what parts of the book are worth remembering.
Talk Early, Talk Often
What can you as a parent do to help your children develop their language skills? Workbooks? Flash cards? No, my advice is much simpler. Talk to them. Talk early. Talk often. Talk about all the interesting aspects of your life together.
Almost Everyone Misunderstands Rational Choice Theory
Of course economics never seeks or claims to explain motives, or why people have the preferences, information, incentives, or constraints they do. It only seeks to demonstrate that, given these, their behavior is rational.
Against Intellectual Property
This will raise the ire of some libertarians, but I can see no merit in arguments that a copy of the product of one’s mental effort is “property.”
The First Hour: Creating Powerful Mornings
It’s easy to fritter your day away doing a thousand small harmless actions … but the essential actions get put off. The antidote, I’ve found, is putting a little emphasis on making the first hour of your day the most powerful hour. Treating that first hour as sacred, not to be wasted on trivial things, but to be filled with only the most essential, most life-changing actions.
Letter To a Prospective Homeschooling Parent
Welcome to the exciting world of learning without schooling! You have already taken the important first step in redefining your child’s education by acknowledging the limitations of mass schooling, recognizing the ways it can dull a child’s curiosity and exuberance, and seeking alternatives to school. Now it’s time to take a deep breath, exhale, and explore.
Self-Directed Education Is Instinctual
The key advantage of Self-Directed Education is that it empowers parents and children. Parents learn to trust their children’s natural learning instincts while tapping into their own instincts about how to best nurture their children’s growth. Children learn to trust themselves, retaining their innate creativity and desire to explore and understand the world around them.
A Voluntaryist 7-Point Plan
As advocates of a truly free society, we voluntaryists, unlike the statists who outnumber us, do not engage in traditional political activism. This simple fact got me thinking about a habitual plan or checklist each of us might form or follow quite naturally, in the course of our daily lives in order to promote the kind of stateless socioeconomic order we envision.